Saturday, December 29, 2012

Jesse James: Ma James

Jesse’s mother

Zerelda Elizabeth Cole James
Simms Samuel (let’s call her Ma James; we
can’t go on giving her that full name) appears in many (but not all) of the
Jesse James movies. She has come in for her own legendization, if you’ll accept
that word. She has especially been portrayed as a dear, granny-like figure,
frail and timorous - think of Jane Darwell (below) in Jesse James in 1939.

Nothing could be further from
the truth.

Her age

First, her age. Why is she
always so old? She was Frank and Jesse’s mother, not grandmother. Jane Darwell
was 60, Agnes Moorehead (The True Storyof Jesse James) was 57 and Fran Ryan (The Long Riders) was 64. Yet Zerelda was born in 1825 and was thus in her 30s
during the war and her 40s during the James gang’s depredations and the Pinkerton
attack on her farm. She was still in her mid-50s when Jesse was killed.

Perhaps it was the known
photographs of her, taken later in life, that make casting people choose older
actresses.

And then the “sainted mother”
or benign, apple-pie aspect: well, let’s look at her life.

Her marriages

Kentucky born, Ma James attended
a Catholic girls’ school. She was literate and intelligent. In 1841 she married
Robert Sallee James, a hemp farmer, slave owner and Baptist preacher. They moved
to Centerville (later Kearney) in Missouri.

They had four children:
Alexander Franklin (Frank), born 1843; Robert James (who died after a month in
1845); Jesse Woodson, born 1847; and Susan Lavenia, born in 1849. So Frank,
Jesse and Susan grew to maturity.

In 1849, Robert James moved to
California to preach to the miners (though there is also some suggestion that
he left to escape his domineering wife) and died of a fever there in 1850. So
Jesse can hardly have remembered him.

In 1852, Ma James made a second marriage,
to Benjamin Simms, 22, a wealthy farmer. The marriage proved
to be an unhappy one. It is said that Simms disliked Frank and Jesse. Zerelda
left Simms, who died in January 1854, when he was thrown by his horse. In 1855, she married a third time, to Dr.
Reuben Samuel (1829 – 1908), "a quiet, passive man … widely described as
standing in the shadow of his outspoken, forceful wife". Together they had
four children:Sarah Louisa (1858 - 1921), John Thomas (1861 - 1934), Fanny Quantrell (1863 - 1922) and Archie Peyton (1866 – 1875).

Her name

In many films (and sometimes in
newspaper reports at the time too) the name was spelled Samuels. However, the spelling Samuel
is quite clearly attested by birth records, family gravestones, and neighbors.
Films referred to her variously as “Mrs. Martha Samuels” (why Martha?), Mrs.
James, Mrs. Samuels and, especially popular, “Ma James”. Only in The True Story of Jesse James and The Long Riders was she accorded her
real name.

Ma James was a fierce and
outspoken member of the pro-slavery militants of Clay County. Slaves were her
most valuable possession and free-state Jayhawkers were not very far away. For
her, Missouri belonged to the South, body and soul.

All contemporary accounts agree
that Ma James was a forceful, strong woman who was utterly committed to the
Southern cause. She gave the “bushwhackers” outspoken support, food and
shelter. When Company L of the Clay County Unionists came to the farm in May
1863 (although Jesse, at 15, was still at home, Frank was known to be with the
guerrillas) they had orders “to arrest the most prominent and influential
rebels and sympathizers.” And it was added, “Women who are violent and
dangerous secessionists must be arrested as well as men.” Perhaps the brutal
treatment meted out by the militiamen (they beat Jesse and half-hanged Dr.
Samuel) justified Zerelda in her own mind for signing the oath of loyalty on
June 5th with no intention whatsoever of keeping her word.

She explicitly condoned the worst
guerrilla atrocities and soon after, she defiantly named her new daughter after
the noted Confederate guerrilla leader famed for his brutality in the cause of
slavery (Quantrell was a common spelling of Quantrill then) “just to have a
Quantrell in the family,” as she put it. Later she played hostess to Bloody
Bill Anderson and his crew and, as TJ Stiles puts it, her “farm became the
cause’s physical home.”

She was perfectly happy to lie as
well as break oaths. After the war she attested that Jesse had been at home the
day in 1869 when John Sheets was murdered. You could argue that it is natural
for any mother to protect her son.

Of course, the bungled Pinkerton
attack on the farm of January 1875, in which the house was partially burned,
Zerelda lost her hand and nine-year-old Archie was killed, was appalling and
inexcusable but it was also a boon to the propaganda effort of the post-war
Southern cause and Zerelda made as much of it as possible.

She did not approve of all the
dime-novel bally-hoo that her sons’ notoriety excited but she still charged a
dollar a time for tours of the farm to curious tourists. The tour ended with
Jesse’s grave (she had him buried an extra few feet down for fear that his
body might be stolen).

She moved to Oklahoma, where
Frank later joined her, and died on a train in 1911 aged 86 while traveling to
San Francisco.

It is clear from this that the “Jane
Darwell” version of Frank and Jesse’s mother was about as far from the reality
as you could get. Of course it served the cause of the “Robin Hood” Jesse James
well and underlined the decency and honesty of the harmless farm boy who was
driven to war and crime by ruthless corporate interests.

But perhaps Ma James - Zerelda Elizabeth Cole James
Simms Samuel - deserves a more accurate portrayal. The nearest she got to it in film was the depiction by Fran Ryan in The Long Riders. There you get a forceful, stubborn Confederate woman ready to defend her sons and the Southern cause.

I don’t think she’s going to get accurate protrayal
from Tom Waits, though, who sang in his song Diamond In Your Mind:

Oh Zerelda Samuel said she almost never prayed
Said she lost her right arm, blown off in a Pinkerton raid
Then they lashed her to a windmill with old 3-fingered Dave
Now she's 102 drinking mint juleps in the shade